EDUCARE was established in 1999 by Educational and Child Psychologist, Dr Anne-Marie Youlden. It has since developed into a leading multi-disciplinary practice designed to bring many related specialist medical, health and educational services into one location for the convenience of families in the Hunter Region. The EDUCARE team consists of a wide range of highly experienced medical and health specialists, who all work together to empower our clients and their families. Our specialists include paediatricians, psychiatrists, psychologists, speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists and teachers.

We aim to maximise patients hand function by providing high quality assessment and rehabilitation following an injury or chronic hand and upper limb condition.

About Stepping Stones Is your child having difficulties with participating fully in their life? Are they less independent than you would like? Stepping Stones can help. We offer a wide range of occupational therapy services to assist you in helping your child to develop the skills and confidence they need to flourish. We see children from birth to 18 years and can offer a comprehensive assessment and individualised interventions to meet the needs of your child. We are available to see children in our clinics, their own homes, at school or in the community. Occupational Therapists (OT’s) are registered health professionals who help people overcome challenges in their everyday occupations. You might wonder what occupations your child has, and the answer to that is many! The primary occupation of childhood is play. Your child will spend many hours of the day engaged in different types of play activities, and during this time they are busy developing essential physical, sensory, social, emotional and cognitive (i.e., thinking) skills that lay the foundations for success in later life. Other childhood occupations include self-care tasks (e.g., feeding yourself, having a bath, washing your hair, getting dressed, doing up buttons and shoelaces etc.) and activities of productivity (e.g. kindy/school activities, handwriting, using scissors, doing chores etc.). Stepping Stones OT’s are trained to assess your child’s performance in these areas in order to determine the specific barriers to their success. Using this information we can then design a treatment program to meet your child’s individual needs. We then work with you in order to help your understanding and to give you practical tools and advice that you can use at home.